I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me.
Margaret AtwoodAnd sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends have been evasive about it, at the time.
Margaret AtwoodI would like to believe this is a story Iโm telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If itโs a story Iโm telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
Margaret Atwood